Paige Calendine can only coach gymnastics now. Born without legs, she found solace in the sport, her first and favorite one. But the 15-year-old has already suffered enough back, wrist, shoulder and hip pain. “So unfortunately,” Paige said, “I had to give it up.”
It’s perhaps the only time “give up” has ever appeared in her vernacular. Now a rising sophomore at Maysville High School, Paige participates in three sports — cheer, swimming, and track and field — and has reached the podium as the first para-athlete in school history. She’s producing results while personifying resilience. “I want to pave the way for kids like me that don’t think they can do a sport,” she said. “I have proved that it’s possible.”
She has been doing so since three years of age, when she learned to swim. Shortly thereafter, gymnastics nabbed her attention. Learning to control her body brought a lot of early challenges. “It was hard to adapt, so that first year was rough,” Paige reported. “But my coaches pushed me and I overcame it. Gymnastics became my first support, my first home.”
Besides a single middle school swim season and a modestly successful foray into archery, Paige depended on gymnastics as her competitive outlet throughout childhood. It crushed her to call it a career so young. “That sport still has a part of me,” she said. “When you love something, it’s precious, but sometimes you have to let it go and go on to the next chapter.”
So far, her next chapter is reading rather nicely. To start, Paige parlayed her tumbling skills into a spot on Maysville’s football and basketball cheer squads. Then came her swim campaign, coached by the same person who taught her to swim.
Theresa Baughman, the Panthers’ head swim coach, saw Paige’s potential right away. “I thought she was going to be a successful athlete when she was three years old,” Baughman said. “She had the drive and wasn’t afraid to try things.” Those traits took hold again during Paige’s freshman season. She tweaked her technique for both backstroke and freestyle. She learned to start off the block. She swam one leg of an otherwise able-bodied relay team — which beat some other teams along the way. “Paige dropped time every time she swam,” Baughman mentioned. At the state para-swim meet, she shaved 11 seconds off her 100-meter freestyle performance. She ultimately finished third in the state in 50-meter para-freestyle and fifth in 100-meter para-backstroke. “People tend to overlook her,” Baughman said, “but she has thrived. You can’t stop her.”
The examples don’t stop there. Paige had never picked up a shotput before this spring, but throwing from a modified wheelchair her dad designed, she threw all apprehension aside. “I had to actually back her off in the beginning,” said Dustin Young, Maysville’s head boys track and field coach who also coaches the program’s female throwers. “Paige was so excited to do something new.” She claimed a couple of gold medals in seated shotput leading up to the state meet. There, she finished fifth and achieved All-Ohio status after a personal best throw. “She’s a torchbearer and a beacon for other kids,” Young said. “It’s joyful watching Paige compete.”
Even opposing crowds think so. “Everybody cheers for her,” Baughman remembered. “No matter where we are, everybody is just blown away that she’s even doing this.” Paige plans to do it for another three years — then, ideally, four more as an adaptive athlete at Ohio State. By then, her coaches can only imagine the singular, permanent legacy this modest history-maker will have amassed. “She’s one of the first athletes in this area to do any of this,” Young said. “That means other para-athletes who come along have something to shoot for. I fully expect Paige to be on the podium for four years, and we’re all going to do everything in our power to get her there.”
In the gym, Paige is empowering her preschoolers in that same way. Still attached to the craft, she’s their teacher now — somehow finding the time to give back to the sport she loved first. “I want to help the younger ones eventually reach a higher level in gymnastics,” she conveyed. She sees shades of herself in their wonder and work ethic. In one specific gymnast, she sees a resolve reminiscent of her own. “I did coach a little girl with leg braces,” Paige said. “She struggled to get her front roll, but she really wanted it. And I helped her achieve that goal.”
It’s a heartening tale of tenacity — far from the last one Paige anticipates shaping. “I want to show people that anything is possible,” she said. “I’m an example of it.”
PHOTOS: Submitted
